My newbie topic

[EricGuitarJames]

ORIGINAL: wodin

OK will do. Say for instance a brigade is doing poorly how is ths resolved without having to star micromanging the units?[&:]

As Dave said, it can depend on the situation. One way would be to save the game prior to giving an order to attack (or whatever). Watch how the situation proceeds. If it works out pretty well as intended then you make a mental note of what you did right. If it all gets screwed up, make a mental note, return to the save and issue different orders. Repeat until satisfied[:)]

Try and avoid the temptation to micro-manage if you can. If a brigade/regiment is doing badly it's probably because you've asked more of it than it can deliver and by micro-managing its components you'll probably miss what you did wrong in the first place. It can be frustrating but when you pull off a perfectly co-ordinated assault involving several large formations and you watch it all happen in one continuous sweep (i.e. without turns[:D] ) it's incredibly rewarding.

[Golf33]

I tend to play the game mostly on F3 - Rout Status. This gives a very good picture of how your units are going, and with a bit of experience you develop a better feel for whether the yellow means your attack is genuinely stalling or just stumbling briefly before going on to steamroller the enemy. In fact I'd recommend playing a few games where you allow an attack that appears to be in trouble to continue until it appears to reach some kind of conclusion - this way you'll start to get a feel for what different quality troops can and can't achieve, and how the situation looks on the way to victory or defeat.

The Morale and Fatigue views are quite useful too, for similar reasons. I tend not to use the F2 - Strength view. There's 3 pages just on views and what to use each one for in the Stratguide, too. In fact the stratguide has a walkthrough of Joe's Bridge that goes into a lot of detail about how to plan a battle (about 16 pages) - this might help you get over that 'where do I start?' feeling when you first load up a scenario.

Regards
33

[wodin]

What happens if you want a brigade todo two things at the same time? I.E send half off to say take and hold an objective whilst sending the rest of to quickly take say a bridge?

Can you issue an order to a Brigade to split the force and send them on two different missions as a brigade commnader could do? Or do you then have to micro manage?

Maybe being able to issue more than one order and letting the AI decide (i.e your commanders)which forces should do what would be great.

Also say you want to take an objective and then after that secure a bridge can you order this at the start or do you have to wait until the first mission is complete?

[EricGuitarJames]

ORIGINAL: wodin

What happens if you want a brigade todo two things at the same time? I.E send half off to say take and hold an objective whilst sending the rest of to quickly take say a bridge?

Can you issue an order to a Brigade to split the force and send them on two different missions as a brigade commnader could do? Or do you then have to micro manage?

You'd have to micro-manage to a certain degree. Allocate resources to one of the battalion hqs so creating a suitable sized battlegroup whilst leaving the rest of the brigade under its brigade commander. I have to say that I've never done this nor felt the need to. If the objectives were close together I'd probably issue an assault order but set the frontage and formation accordingly. If they were far apart then they wouldn't be part of a single brigade order in my judgement. My thoughts anyway[:)]

Also say you want to take an objective and then after that secure a bridge can you order this at the start or do you have to wait until the first mission is complete?

To a large degree you'd have to wait. You can play around with waypoints, formation, aggression levels etc. to simulate this to a certain degree. Bear in mind though that you don't have to wait until you get the 'Unit x is securing the objective' message before issuing fresh orders.

If I've missed anything put me right someone[:)]